Generally, it is desirable to fully occupy resources assigned for a transmission. The unused resources mean that the assigned resources are wasted, thereby reducing communications system efficiency. Inefficiently used resources may consume resources that may otherwise be assigned to other transmissions and reduce a number of users supported in the communications system, data rate of the communications system, reliability of the communications system, and so forth.
Furthermore, due to the unused resources, the transmission may be transmitted at a lower code rate than possible if all of the assigned resources are used. Thereby making the transmission more prone to errors than need be.